Image source - cnbc.com
Presidents of USA & South Korea held a meeting at White House on 21 May 2021, a day later in the joint press conference, they reiterated the urgency to engage North Korea in dialogue over its nuclear weapons. Biden and Moon said the complete de-nuclearization of the Korean peninsula is their goal, with Biden stressing he was "under no illusions" about the difficulty of getting North Korea to give up its nuclear arsenals after his predecessors failed."
North Korea has rebuffed U.S. entreaties for diplomacy since Biden took over from Donald Trump, who had three summits with Kim and famously exchanged "beautiful letters" with the third-generation leader. All three meetings between Trump and Kim were ostensibly focused on de-nuclearization. Yet rather than reduce his stockpile, Kim doubled his country’s arsenal of nuclear weapons during the four years Trump was president. Kim refused to give up his nuclear weapons but did impose a freeze on testing them. He has not tested a nuclear bomb nor launched an inter-continental ballistic missile since 2017, although experts believe his arsenal has steadily grown.
Biden said he would be willing to meet Kim under the right conditions - if he agreed to discuss his nuclear program and that his advisers first met with their North Korean counterparts to lay the groundwork.
"I would not do what had been done in the recent past; I would not give him all he's looking for - international recognition as legitimate and allow him to move in the direction of appearing to be more ... serious about what he wasn't at all serious about."